


Washed Out to Sea

by cheerynoir



Series: Drowning!verse [9]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (that goes without saying), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dissociation, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Kidnapping, M/M, Medication, Minor Injuries, POV Second Person, Power Imbalance, Present Tense, Ramsay is his own warning, Reminiscing, Suspense, The Search for Jeyne Poole Continues, Things Get Worse, Thriller, foster kid Theon, someone please help theon greyjoy, sweet summer children don't you know winter is here?, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 00:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4039927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheerynoir/pseuds/cheerynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> Late August-Early September</i>
</p>
<p>Ramsay’s had a busy summer. Theon gets curious, left alone as he is. That goes about as well for him as you’d expect.</p>
<p>(Unbeknownst, the search for Jeyne Poole continues.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Washed Out to Sea

_Late August_

Vayon Poole is pleading with the press, with the public, with the person – or persons – who took his daughter. He’s been pleading for weeks. You watch his pain and his determination and his grief play out across your screen like you’ve never heard the name before – never known that Jeyne Poole had a snorty little giggle and that she liked to watch boxing for the men rather than the blood, even while Sansa protested the violence. You watch like you’ve never known that she used to gaze from the patio while you monopolized the Stark’s pool, cutting through the waves like you’d never known dry land. 

(Robb had always lurked in the shade and tried to tempt you from the water, his skin pinking from summer sun, you recall with a sudden clarity. If you ignored him long enough, he’d join you with a grumble and a tremendous splash. If you didn’t, you could always pull him in, laughing. He fell for the same trick every time, and broke the surface outraged but grinning.)

That’s a dangerous thought – a spiral that only went down. Sometimes it feels like that happened to someone else. You shut your eyes and breathe in the smell of the carpet. You lay on the floor of your living room, the carpet scratching your cheek, one of Ramsay’s bare feet on your stomach. It’s hot. It’s late. The carpet smells of cigarettes and something you spilled a while ago and never bothered to clean up. But his foot is a gentle weight, and warm. He is careful with you, because he fractured one of your ribs a week ago in a game you couldn’t play well enough to suit his needs, let alone win. 

(You almost hate that you’re grateful. You catch yourself thinking he’s kind and nearly sneer.)

The television goes dark. Ramsay gives you a bit of a shake with his foot and you whine through your teeth, jarring your ribs when you curl away.

“Enough of that. I barely touched you,” says Ramsay, impatient. He stands and you’re slow enough that he catches you by the hair and drags you upright. You set your teeth. “Come on,” he says, already moving. “Unless you want me to fuck you on the floor.”

You don’t. You really don’t. Your knees are still raw with carpet-burn from before.

“Sorry,” you say. “Sorry, no.”

But you’ve done something wrong regardless – he was gentle before, but he isn’t after you strip down for bed. His hands hurt, even when they aren’t playing across your bruises. He chips one of your teeth on the headboard and only thrusts harder, faster, when you spit out the fragment and the blood onto his pillow. Every move he makes burns and aches.

At least it’s over quickly.

After, he brings you a glass of water and a couple of pills.

“Take your medicine, there’s a good pet.”

You cheek the pill and don’t know why. Sleep would be preferable to the pain. But you drink the water and lay own and wait, counting your bruises and scrapes and every part of your body that thrums with pain.

He’s gone after you hit double-digits, but before you get to fifty.

You dress and follow him. He’s been leaving more often – it’s not your place, but you want to know where he’s going and why.

You manage to keep sight of him. He cuts across the parking lot to his BMW – gifted to him from his father – and you follow suit with your sister’s keys clutching in your clammy fist to stop the jingling.

You clutch the steering wheel too tightly, and your knuckles are bloodless by the first red light. You’re a mess of cold sweat and shaking nerves as you inch from Pyke to Harlaw to the bridge that connects Harlaw to the mainland. The streets are empty, so you hang back as much as you can without losing sight of his car. But once you get to Seagard, you let out a hard breath and relief makes you slump slackly back against the seat. The roads are not thick with traffic, but it’s enough. It’s a Friday night and the summer is dying. Students are out, drunk and happy.

(You glance at them as they stagger down the street. You can’t remember the last time you felt that loose, that carefree. Your stomach turns over and you snap your gaze back to the vehicle four car-lengths ahead.)

But as you follow Ramsay onto the Kingroad highway heading North, you can’t help but wonder. Where is he going? Home? Who the hell goes home after midnight? And why would he have to make such a secret of it?

Your stomach cramps and you find yourself biting your nails as you cruise past the Northern subdivision. You don’t slow, but you can just catch the tall grey house on the hill. Winterfell. You watch it in your rear-view mirror until it’s nothing but a blur.

Anxiety gives way to confusion. You know where Ramsay lives, by reputation if nothing else. 

(Robb dragged you trick-or-treating, once, for his siblings. You remember laughing when he grabbed Rickon by the hand. “Stay away from there,” he said, jerking his chin toward the house at the end of the street, with its tall, precisely cut hedges. Arya had laughed and mussed Rickon’s hair. “Yeah, stay away from the Dreadfort or the Leech Lord will suck your blood,” she cackled. She’d nearly swallowed her fake fangs attempting the laugh, but it was a good effort.)

You drive past the Dreadfort, and the road gets deserted again, the further you go North.

Is he going to the Wall? You wonder, and spit out a fragment of your fingernail.

The radio gives way to static eventually (you’re too far from the city, you think and your heart is a wild thing in your chest) and you switch it off with surprisingly steady fingers. Time creeps onward.

Its half past two and the ground is hilly, the turns sudden and growing sharper, when a sign looms up out of the dark: Last Hearth.

You passed Long Lake a few miles ago. Long Lake and Last River are popular with cottagers, though the coming autumn should be scaring them off by now. It’s the quiet, you heard it said. The privacy. Last Hearth, you overheard it said – a private conversation between Mister and Missus Stark, years ago – had all of the privacy of Long Lake, but none of its lovely view. Just hills and trees and a fast-coming chill.

Naturally, Ramsay pulls into a long, narrow lane, tired crunching. The moon is bright enough, even out here, to make out the lone cabin on the crest of a hill, a light burning in one of the windows. It can’t be as close to the road as you think – it’s only the shadows playing tricks.

You heart is in your throat and your skin breaks out into a cold sweat anew. Your mouth is dry and you lick salt from your upper lip, idling there on the shoulder of a narrow road, your gaze fixed on that light.

Why is he here, you think. Why is he – he didn’t have the dogs with him. Why is he at his father’s cabin. There’s no reason to – and who’s waiting for him?

Stomach cramping, you lean forward and put your forehead on the steering-wheel. The car smells like stale cigarettes and leather, like the last breath of a pine air-freshener. You try to slow your breathing but it’s sharp and shuddery in your chest. It hurts.

(Your rib protests, the fractured one. You remember it too late and ignore it regardless. Squeaky wheels don’t get anything but neglected, you knew that before Ramsay, but he’s helped you remember regardless.)

The fact line up two-by-two and march across your brain hard enough to make it ache.

One) Ramsay’s been leaving you more and more often – at night, but also for days at a time. Two) He’s been coming back in a better mood than when he left. Ramsay’s rarely happy, but he’s almost giddy those times.  
Three) He’s been pulling away even when you’re in the same room, and he’s quicker to lash out than he was.  
Four) He’s been keeping secrets. He never tells you where he goes, or who he sees – you’ve known him a year, almost, and you still don’t know what he does for a living.  
Five) he’s been coming to the cabin and  
Six) There’s someone here to wait for him.

Bile burns the back of your throat and you try to shy from it. He’s not – he wouldn’t.

( _Yes he would._ )

You scrabble for something – anything – to justify this. He leaves a light on in the cabin. He comes here to think. He- he –

He came home smelling like musky perfume a few weeks ago. A cheap smell, more alcohol than flowers.

It’s easier to drive away – to run back to your dingy apartment – than it is to put everything together.

 

_Labor Day Weekend: Sept 4-6_

 

Now that you know what you’re looking for, it seems too obvious. Insultingly so. Did he not realize it – or did he just not care if you knew?

Probably not, you think, with a bitter little smile. This is the man who asked if you were planning on jumping the night you met on the edge of a bridge.

But it gnaws at you – worse than the pain from your chipped tooth, your fractured rib. Not knowing who it was, exactly, that caught his attention when you were here, willing to put up with – with far too much. Who were they and why did they want him and why do you feel like shit about it?

It all circles and circles. Your head pounds and your mouth tastes like pennies from all the times you’ve bitten your tongue to keep from blurting this out and laying your rage and your grief at Ramsay’s feet.

(He’d only laugh after all.)

But he’s gone for a week, on out of town business. You don’t believe him, but you have no other option. He stands in the doorway when he tells you, and you bury your face in the pillow and pretend everything’s fine until he leaves.

That was yesterday night. You’ve borrowed your sister’s car to run some errands, the first weekend of September. You pick up the spare parts she needs for her bike and the groceries, the cigarettes and liquor. And all this churns in your brain, beating like waves on some rocky, glittering shore. He’s cheating on you; you’re less than nothing, you have nothing if he doesn’t want you, how, how how—

You’re on the Kingsroad before you can think better of it. 

You need to _know_.

The cabin is dark when you park your borrowed car behind some shrubs, hidden at a glance from the road. All is still and quiet as you stumble up the hill and up to the property. There is no name on the post marking the laneway. There is only the lot number, hanging crooked. Ramsay’s car is nowhere in sight, and you let out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding.

The sun is high and bright, the sky a flawless blue. Cloud scatter like popcorn, and you keep your eyes on your feet. You’re cold, regardless of how picturesque everything is.

The cabin is dim and quiet as you approach, the windows gaping and dark. It’s a corpse with its eyes open. You shiver and draw closer, thumping up the steps of a porch that looks newly made. The roof shingles look new too, you notice as you scan the eaves. The door is locked, but you expected that. You waste few moments looking under rocks and in all those little hidey-holes people tend to use. There’s nothing, and all the windows are barred.

You explore instead.

Peering in windows doesn’t get you anything – each room is a small, neat mausoleum, dust-free but no less empty. You can just spy dishes drying near the sink through the kitchen window, a newspaper on the table, rumpled and read and messily re-folded. Little signs of life. 

So you widen your search. There are tire-tracks in the soft earth, but you never learned how to track, so you have no idea how old they are. The woods press in, weirwood and ironwood and maple and birch, their leaves starting to fade to orange and yellow already. You shiver and glance about.

Kennels stand empty behind the cabin. The food-bowls are stacked neatly, the water dishes are dry. You curl your fingers through the chain-link door and swallow hard. The air smells of rot and autumn. If the girls were here, it wasn’t recently.

Something clatters and you flinch. The gate rattles under your palm and you let go as if burned, whipping your head about looking for – something, anything. You half-expect Ramsay to appear like something out of a nightmare, but the lot is quiet. You’re alone—

Except you’re not. You think you hear something.

“Hello?” you ask. You leave the kennels behind and start gingerly toward the last building on the property. There’s a weirwood stump a yard or so from the door, its sap dried to a scabby red-brown among the roots and dying grass. An axe is imbedded deep into the wood, gleaming in the morning light. You look away, breathing gently to keep your ribs from hurting.

“Hello,” you call again, and hate the way your voice shakes. Again, there’s a clattering, a muffled sort of thump. 

It’s coming from the shed.

It’s a raccoon, you tell yourself as you draw closer. Your feet shuffle over loose earth and small twigs. It’s a raccoon, and you’re getting scared for nothing, you idiot. Don’t be so stupid, pet.

(When did you start thinking in Ramsay’s voice?)

The door of the shed doesn’t creak when you push it open with a surprisingly steady hand. Its hinges are well-oiled, and it’s hung right on the jamb. Practical, really. Well-made. 

(Roose Bolton would expect nothing less.)

You breathe in gingerly, standing there in the threshold, and the smell of wood is less of a comfort than you’d hoped. City-boy, a son of Pyke, you’ve always been calmest near the sea.

It’s not pitch-black in there, but its dark enough. Light seeps through cracks in the walls, and it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust.

You don’t see a racoon, or a stray cat. There are stacks of chopped wood along the far wall, and the rest of the space is neatly organized. You think you see old farm-equipment hung up – scythes and thrashers and shears, a branding iron and what looks like kit for a horse – along with a small charcoal barbeque. There’s a workbench and tools along one wall. 

You let out a breath.

Something moves in the darkest corner of the shed. You stumble back with a yelp when something lunges and there’s a sharp clanging that cuts the air. You register a cry of pain that isn’t yours.

“Help. Help me. Please you have to – he’ll be back he’ll be back soon please please please help me. Help me!”

You can only stare, dumbfounded.

You’d rather him cheat on you – that’s all you can think for a long moment. You’d rather have Ramsay be a cheater than – than –

Your mind loops back on itself, gibbering, and you feel yourself moving forward like it’s happening to someone else. It doesn’t matter.

“Please please please, oh gods, please, say something say something tell me he didn’t send you please I’ll be good, I’ll give you anything, I just want to go home please—”

You found Jeyne Poole.

You lunge, tripping over yourself in your hurry, and she flinches back, pressing herself small and shaking against the back wall. She’s jingling, and it takes you a frantic moment to realize why: there’s a chain around her neck, looped snug and padlocked in place. The other end, you notice, is wrapped around one of the rafters.

“A key. Jeyne I need – I need a key,” you say. Your hands hover, close but not touching. “Jeyne. Come on we gotta get you out of here, shit. A key, I need…”

You can’t yank on the chain without choking her. You look around frantically for a key or something that you could use for a lock-pick but there’s nothing.

There is, however, a hacksaw hung neatly over the work-bench. You scramble for it and bring it back. But your hands shake so bad you nearly drop it. Jeyne’s clutching at your clothes, crying now, gasping “please” and “he’ll be back” and “help” and “Theon” between her sobs and it’s all you can do to keep a hand steady on her shoulder.

“Careful careful I’m getting you out of here, it’s going to be okay, Jeyne, it’s okay, you have to hold still,” you’re babbling and the words taste like bile. You shudder at the first rasp of metal on metal but you drag the saw against the chain again anyway, careful so careful. You cut above Jeyne’s head, not much slack in the chain, not much leverage to be had, but you don’t want to cut her by mistake.

You’re so intent that you don’t notice Jeyne cringing back, her arms coming up to shield her face as she cowers back against the wall of the shed. Your hair falls into your eyes, but you just flick it back and grip the chain more firmly to accommodate the angle. You work faster.

Too fast.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

You flinch at the sudden interruption and the saw jumps from the groove you’re making in the chain and bites deeply into you forearm. You yelp, already turning. Your arms drop to you sides, nerveless.

Ramsay stands in the doorway, between you and freedom. There’s nothing in his hands. But he’s smiling, and the full weight of his attention nails your feet to the floor. You stand between him and Jeyne, and all you want is to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Blood runs down your arm and drips off your slack fingers. The soil soaks it up greedily, and you wonder how many other have watched that happen, here, in this shack in the middle of the woods.

“Ramsay,” you say. Iron bands around your lungs and you can’t breathe but for sharp little sips. Sweat breaks cold across your face, and your grip tightens on the saw.

He tips his head a little and steps into the shed. His white shirt stands out starkly in the dimness. The door shuts behind him, and the darkness closes in, incomplete.

“Hello, pet. Come to play, have you?”

His smile widens, malevolent, and his deadened eyes spark with interest. Behind you, Jeyne curls up as much as the chain will allow. You can hear her whimpering. Ramsay comes closer, bands of light and shadow cutting across his face.

“I have the perfect game in mind.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading guys - and sorry for the long wait on this one, things just kept coming up. And thank you to those that have commented and kudos'd and popping in to message me on tumblr. I love all of you, and thank you so, so much.
> 
> This has been unbeta'd, so if you see any mistakes, please let me know.
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.cheerynoir.tumblr.com/)!


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